TIẾNG VIỆT Vietnam’s monetary policy not intended to create an unfair trade: central bank
An employee counts US dollars at a branch of HDBank in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, January 12, 2018. Photo by Reuters/Kham.
On Wednesday, the U.S. Treasury labeled Vietnam and Switzerland as currency manipulators while adding three new countries to a suspected watch list of taking measures to devalue their currencies against the dollar.
The Treasury said both Switzerland and Vietnam had intervened in currency markets to prevent effective balance of payments adjustments.
The action comes as the global coronavirus pandemic skews trade flows and widens U.S. deficits with trading partners, an irritant to Trump, who won office four years ago partly on a promise to close the U.S. trade gap.
To be labeled a manipulator, countries must at least have a $20 billion-plus bilateral trade surplus with the United States, foreign currency intervention exceeding 2 percent of gross domestic product and a global current account surplus exceeding 2 percent of GDP, Reuters said.
The central bank affirmed that the exchange rate management has been under the framework of the general monetary policy, which is aimed at realizing Vietnam's consistent goal of controlling inflation and stabilizing the macro economy.
Recent intervention of buying foreign currencies to ensure the smooth operation of the foreign exchange market in the context of an abundant supply of foreign currencies, contributing to macroeconomic stability, and strengthening foreign exchange reserves, Vietnam central bank said.
The US Treasury said in its Wednesday report that Vietnam's trade surplus continued to expand in the first half of 2020, helping push the current account surplus over the four quarters through June 2020 to 4.6 percent of GDP.
Over the same period, Vietnam's goods trade surplus with the U.S. reached $58 billion, the fourth largest among Washington's trading partners, according to the report.
The Treasury also said its “monitoring list” of countries that meet some of the criteria has grown to 10 with the additions of Taiwan, Thailand and India. Others on the list include China, Japan, Korea, Germany, Italy, Singapore and Malaysia.
